Windows 7: The Missing Manual

Chapter 11. Internet Explorer 8

Internet Explorer is the most famous Web browser on earth, thanks in part to several years of Justice Department scrutiny and newspaper headlines. It also has more syllables than any other Web browser, which is probably why most people just call it IE.

The revamped version 8 offers plenty of new features. A bunch of them are dedicated, as always, to privacy and security—features like SmartScreen filter (blocks phishing and virus/spyware sites), InPrivate Browsing (blocks certain ads and other Web graphics that can track your Web movements), and InPrivate Filtering (lets you surf without leaving any tracks like cookies or History-list items). There are so many security features in IE, in fact, that they’d weigh this chapter down with all their negative energy. They’ve been offloaded to Chapter 10.

There are lots of great new productivity features, too, though: a better Search box; accelerators for instant mapping, translation, or searching; a command that lets you reopen a tab you’ve closed by accident; and so on.

All these goodies and more are described in this chapter.

Note

Internet Explorer 8 is better than previous Internet Explorer versions—it’s more secure, it has more modern features, and it’s much more compatible with today’s Web standards.

Nonetheless, you should be aware that there are other free browsers out there, like Firefox (www.getfirefox.com), Safari (http://apple.com/safari), and Chrome (http://google.com/chrome), which are all much faster ...